GeForce Now Review: Game Streaming Done (Mostly) Right

Our Verdict

GeForce Now streams lots of games with beautiful graphics and solid frame rates for an affordable monthly fee, but it has room to improve.

For

Excellent streaming quality
Cheap
Lots of games

Confronting

Requires pricey existing setup
Inconsistent selection

Tom's Guide Verdict

GeForce Now streams lots of games with beautiful graphics and solid frame rates for an affordable monthly fee, only information technology has room to amend.

Pros

+
Excellent streaming quality
+
Cheap
+
Lots of games

Cons

-
Requires pricey existing setup
-
Inconsistent selection

Always since Netflix convinced the general population that owning media was out and streaming media was in, gamers take been wondering when they'd get a subscription-based service to call their own. GeForce Now ($viii per month) is one of the first serious contenders for the title, and while the program is however in its infancy, it speaks of a promising future for the engineering. While the service even so needs more titles and better streaming quality for certain games, it'south definitely worth your attention, and possibly worth your difficult-earned scratch.

Update: GeForce At present comes with admission to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 , and the GeForce At present RTX 3080 tier is at present fully available for to access for a reasonable fee .

How GeForce At present Works

GeForce Now is a streaming service that renders PC games in the deject, and then streams them to your Nvidia Shield tablet, Shield Portable or Shield TV. The $8 monthly fee lets y'all stream a rotating selection of most l games, although your start iii months are free. Yous can also buy newer titles, similar The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Metro Terminal Light Redux, à la carte. Prices range up to $60 on these.

How We Tested

In order to evaluate the GeForce Now service, I tested it for near a week on an Nvidia Shield TV. I had access to all of the subscription games, as well as The Witcher 3, Resident Evil Revelations ii and Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power. I didn't test every game on the system, merely I played through a good selection of them for at least xv minutes, and some for a few hours, in order to come across how well the service ran in full general.

Interface

First off, the interface is admirably straightforward. Players can see a list of their most recently played games, also every bit featured à la carte du jour games on 1 menu, and featured subscription titles on some other one. Yous tin can scroll down a little further to organize games past genre (Action, Racing, Role-Playing and then forth), or fifty-fifty scan curated collections, like all the Batman games or Lego games available on the service.

Option

1 of the reasons why Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime number Instant Video are and so beloved in the streaming video scene are because they accept fantastic selections. The selection on GeForce At present, by dissimilarity, is either eclectic or haphazard, depending on how much you lot like what'due south on offering. Make no error: Numerically speaking, launching with well-nigh 70 games is fantastic, but aside from 2 very notable series, it'southward not yet a viable replacement for a full library of PC or console games.

GeForce Now excels in offering games in the Batman: Arkham and Lego series. It has the vast majority of both, and they're all available with a subscription. Bated from those two, however, there are lots of incomplete series, including The Witcher, Saints Row, Trine, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil and The Walking Dead. If you want to play games merely to impale time, GeForce At present has plenty; if yous want to follow the stories or main the gameplay of your favorite serial, you're probably still ameliorate off with a traditional console or PC, at least until the selection grows.

Gameplay

The well-nigh important question is whether GeForce Now can really stream games at full-Hard disk resolution inside seconds of ownership them, equally advertised, rather than waiting for deadening installations or downloads. The answer is a solid "yep," with simply one notable exception. Whether a game streams at 30 or 60 frames per second, you lot'll be able to play information technology in full 1080p with very niggling buffering and only a few moments of lag or stuttering.

I tested a wide variety of games, only spent the most time with The Witcher iii, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Trine 3 and Devil May Cry iv. The latter 3 titles ran phenomenally well. Each took between 10 and xv seconds to load, and I observed them running in full-Hard disk resolutions at the frame rates described. Diggings through New York Metropolis equally a Lego version of Atomic number 26 Man was as seamless every bit honing my gun-fu skills against demonic attackers in Devil May Cry's outrageous, fluid spectacle fights.

The Witcher 3, however, proved problematic. Every time I loaded the title upward, I found it to be laggy and prone to screen tearing, stuttering, frame-skipping and generally running in such a way every bit to make it almost unplayable, especially during combat. This was particularly disappointing, as it should be one of the system'southward showcase titles: easily the newest and most technologically demanding game that GeForce At present currently has to offer.

It's worth noting that I was continued via Ethernet to a xl Mbps connection and exceeded all recommended parameters for the GeForce Now service, and that The Witcher 3 was the merely title that gave me whatever problems. I also used a router recommended by Nvidia for the GeForce Now Service: a Netgear W7000. Nevertheless, I am not prepared to say that the problem was on the server side, as Nvidia did not believe that this was a common outcome. If yous choose to buy The Witcher iii on GeForce Now, just be enlightened that it may non run as well as the service's other titles.

Requirements

GeForce Now works very well (in general), doesn't cost very much and has a reasonable selection for a service that's simply starting out. However, if it has a significant drawback, it'south that it may not play nicely with your existing setup. To connect as Nvidia recommends, you lot need fast Internet, an Ethernet connection and a fancy router.

Now, GeForce Now works only on a Shield Boob tube, Shield Portable or Shield Tablet. The outset two cost at to the lowest degree $200, while the latter costs at least $300. It's cheaper than ownership a traditional console or a gaming PC, but you also don't get admission to the aforementioned number of games, or new games equally soon as they launch.

Nvidia advises users that they need a 10 Mbps connection for bare minimum quality on GeForce Now. For reference, the average American broadband speed is 11.4 Mbps, then there are certainly many broadband connections that are slower than that. Nvidia also recommends different broadband speeds for ameliorate tiers of gaming: 20 Mbps for 720p at 60 fps, and fifty Mbps for 1080p at 60 fps.

Assuming yous do take a speedy Internet connection, getting adept streaming quality over Wi-Fi is highly dependent on your setup and proximity. If you desire to run GeForce Now at acme efficiency, you lot'll need to hook your Shield device direct to a router (or a modem). If your entertainment middle isn't inside cable distance of your console, streaming games is probably going to exist a distant second in terms of overall experience to downloading them.

More: Nvidia Shield Android Tv set Review — Powerful Only Pricey

Finally, Nvidia lists a "Shield-Ready 5-GHz Wi-Fi router" as a requirement, not merely a recommendation. These routers are on the expensive finish of the spectrum, ranging from $100 all the fashion up to $300.

(For what it'due south worth, I did non accept any trouble using a lower-end Netgear WNDR3400 router, merely Nvidia recommended that I upgrade, as this might take been the cause of my Witcher three issues. As far as I can tell, it was non.)

Consider this exam case: A Shield Boob tube costs $200. A Comcast 75 Mbps plan costs $77 per calendar month. (Comcast does not offering a 50 Mbps plan; other service providers may.) GeForce Now costs $8 per month. A D-Link DIR-890L router (Nvidia'southward recommended model) costs $310. If you are starting totally from scratch, a GeForce Now setup running at recommended parameters will cost $595. Information technology's hardly a deal-billow, especially compared to what a skillful gaming PC costs, just even with a Shield TV and a GeForce Now subscription, you may have to upgrade other tech to make them work at peak efficiency.

Lesser Line

If you already have a Shield system, you should become a GeForce Now subscription. For the sheer book of games you get, $viii per month is peanuts, and the vast majority of games run just as well every bit something you'd download. If you're just looking for something new to play as opposed to a specific game, the selection is adept, and will but ameliorate over time.

On the other paw, if you're looking to buy a Shield as your main gaming system, I'm not nonetheless convinced that it acts every bit a full replacement for a PlayStation 4, an Xbox One or a PC. At that place aren't many games available à la carte; at that place's a significant delay between a game's mainstream release and its GeForce Now release; and running games at full chapters can be both enervating and expensive.

On the whole, GeForce At present has had a very smooth launch and seems like a promising service that already does a lot right, merely all the same has a lot of room to grow. As long as the service continues forth its current path, its aim of being the Netflix of gaming definitely seems attainable.

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Marshall Honorof is a senior editor for Tom's Guide, overseeing the site'due south coverage of gaming hardware and software. He comes from a science writing groundwork, having studied paleomammalogy, biological anthropology, and the history of science and engineering science. After hours, y'all tin can find him practicing taekwondo or doing deep dives on classic sci-fi.